Is Licensing SCO Unix Legally Dangerous?

cheros asks: "I'm starting to get very puzzled by the SCO licensing scheme - am I mistaken or is licensing SCO actually about the most dangerous thing you can do as business or end user using Linux? [disclaimer: IANAL and AFAIK, so get decent legal council - I might be completely wrong ;-)] If I buy a copy of Linux from a provider, my contract is with that provider, NOT with SCO. In other words, if said provider has supplied me with something dodgy (and that is still very much an open question IMO), the issue lies with SCO and the provider, not with me and SCO, as I have no contractual relation with SCO in any way, shape or form. So, licensing SCO might actually CREATE that relationship and thus enable SCO to play further games with enforceable contractual obligations, something it currently lacks with end users. If that is correct it puts SCO in an even worse light (if that's possible) as that could mean deception as well as FUD. The latter might have become accepted in business and politics, but the former might actually be illegal in some countries. In short, as far as I can see you don't actually have a problem as a Linux end user...until you get a license. Comments?"

Comments

The one thing that licensing SCO linux will do is

[Xenkar]

It will make all of your linux friends laugh at you. Your new nickname will be SCO boy or something less flattering.

Your contract is with the distributor

[Dancin_Santa]

However, the distributor must comply with the terms of the copyright holder. If SCO holds any copyrights that are not covered by the GPL on the Linux codebase, your distributor is in violation of SCO's copyright unless they have specific exemptions granted by SCO.

The upshot of this is that you as a consumer are safe from litigation, but if you were a distributor of the code (even passing a CD around the office would suffice) then you can be charged with copyright violations of SCO's code.